Jerked Awake
by notesofwimsey
Summary: Looks like this may turn out to be a series of post-eps, focusing on whichever story line and characters stuck with me! SPOILERS up to and including Episode 5:19-Communication Breakdown.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: All people, places, and things that rightly belong to CBS, CSI New York, and Bruckheimer remain in their custody.

SPOILERS: Set after Episode 5:13: Rush to Judgment.

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Jerked Awake

_Screams cutting through the terror filling the room like gas. A body twitching and shuddering, turning in on itself like a nest of vipers. And he stands, frozen, incapable of movement, fingers swollen, hands too big to do more than flap uselessly, feet growing into the ground while the retching and choking grows louder and louder…_

He flung himself up, coughing and scratching at his throat as if to break the clutch of cold stiff hands, gasping and fighting down the impulse to vomit. He sat, hunched over, breathing hard, for a few minutes before falling back onto sour-smelling sheets and a wrinkled, sweat-stained pillow.

Flack scrubbed his hands over his face, and ran a wincing tongue over fuzzy teeth. Perhaps that last pitcher hadn't been a good idea. It had seemed like it at the time, nearly as good as the three before it, but maybe it really hadn't been.

The Rangers had stunk. All the way through the game they had stood on the edge of disaster, never quite tipping over, nor stepping back. His head had ached with the effort of pushing them – by the end of the evening, it had no longer mattered to them which way they went – to hell or to the Stanley Cup, as long as they _moved, _stopped teetering, made a decision.

Flack rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, his body urging him up – for relief, for food, for a shower and clean teeth – his brain too tired to work out the necessary physical movements.

As a day, it had sucked. Big time. The moment that kid had gone down played over and over in Flack's head – the eyes rolling into the back of his head, the thin young body jerking uncontrollably, the foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth.

Flack rubbed his eyes again.

Then the questions, the doubt, the look in people's eyes as they had avoided him. He had felt exposed, spotlighted, sitting at his desk all day in the middle of the precinct room, waiting for something, anything, to happen. A decision to be made.

He hated waiting. He hated feeling helpless.

Jess.

He sighed, and rolled over, curling into a ball and closing his eyes. What was he going to do about Jess?

He liked her. He really did. They had a good buzz going between them. She was smart, tough, sexy, a good cop. He respected her on the job, and that couldn't be discounted when the job was such a big part of them both.

They came from the same place, the same background – lots of noisy and demanding family, that 'blue blood' that only a member of another New York cop family could completely understand.

They had moved slow at first, knowing that anything happening between them would have repercussions. But when they finally got together, snuck off for a weekend upstate after Christmas, it had all clicked. They were good together. He knew they could be good together.

But.

But.

When she had come into the room and checked the kid's pulse, she had said, "He's dead."

She hadn't said, "What did you do?"

But he had felt the question reverberating through her very skin, filling the air around him.

When she had come to tell him about her interview, she had focused on IAB's questioning of their relationship, as good as accusing him of running his mouth. Like he'd have put either of them in that position. For what? The dubious pleasure of rubbing Statler's and Kopinski's nose in the fact that he had tapped what they had been drooling over for months?

What did she take him for? A sixteen-year-old? Too young to know when to zip his trousers, or his lips?

He had been sitting, naked, flayed in the unrelenting scrutiny of men whose respect and trust he had sent months working day in and day out to get back after the Truby case in which he had been forced to turn on one of his own men. He had sat there in the glare of their renewed doubt and suspicion, and she could only think about her reputation.

As if by being with him, she had been tainted.

Flack rolled over the other way again, and squeezed his eyes even tighter against the intrusive light shining in through blinds he hadn't bothered to close the night – morning really – before, when he had fallen into bed still wearing most of his clothes.

The memory of a kiss on the cheek, cool hands wrapping around him in a comforting and public hug, the shining confidence of his innocence warmed through him with the same healing touch on his aching shoulders as the heat of the sun too bright to face.

Stella had never doubted him for a minute. The lab had his back. Danny, Hawkes, Lindsay – all had sent a message from the field or lab, not telling him anything about their findings – they knew better than to compromise the case – but assuring him they were looking for the explanation they all knew would exonerate him.

Even Adam had dropped by, stammering and blushing, with a file from another case that could easily have been put through interdepartmental mail. He hadn't managed to say much, at least not much coherent, but Flack had found a semblance of his usual grin and had bumped fists in gratitude for the show of support.

Mac. Flack didn't know whether to be surprised or not by Mac's vocal ridiculing of the idea that the kid's death could be in anyway Flack's fault. They'd always been close colleagues – hell, after a guy has tied your guts together with a shoelace, you can't be standoffish, can you? But they were different generations, different backgrounds. They were, in some ways Flack couldn't articulate, closer than he was with his father.

Like Gavin Moran, his first mentor, Mac Taylor could push all his buttons and make him crazy. But he also pushed Flack to think deeper, work harder, be better, than he ever could on his own.

Mac had stayed through the game, nursing one glass out of the endless pitchers of beer that kept showing up on the table as more and more cops were clued in – "Blue was in the clear" – and came to make up in bonhomie what they had lacked in solidarity earlier in the day. He had stayed through to the final three minutes of the game, when Chicago had finally and decisively sent the Rangers home with their tails between their legs by scoring twice on an empty net. He had dropped a hand on Flack's shoulder and said good night, and left Flack in a circle of increasingly loose Ranger fans drowning their sorrows.

Flack had barely noticed he had left.

Finally, the demands of his body were screaming loud enough that Flack could no longer ignore them, and he stumbled into his bathroom to begin repairing the ravages of the day – and night – before.

When he left a few hours later, scrubbed, fed, clean, in jeans and a sweatshirt, to go see Detective Jessica Angell and repair what he could of their friendship, the sun which had stabbed through his head like an ice pick had warmed into a kiss on the cheek and a hug on the neck and shoulders.

Like a friendly caress that carried you through the darkest times.

"Whisk," he found himself thinking again. "Huh. I _knew_ that!"


	2. Chapter 2

_DISCLAIMER: All people, places, and things that rightly belong to CBS, CSI New York, and Bruckheimer remain in their custody._

_SPOILERS: Set after Episode 5:18: Point of No Return_

_A/N: Hmm. Looks like a series of post-eps might be in the offing._

_

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**Jerked Up Short**

His back smashed against the wall, an arm pressed against his throat.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" Her voice rang out, brown eyes snapping with fury.

He could feel the frantic kick of the child in her belly against his lower body.

"Whoa there, Montana! What are we talking about here?" His arms were out flung, eyes rolling in his head as he struggled to breathe.

"Did you think no one would tell me? You were talking to me on the phone not two hours after being in a shoot-out with a stone cold killer. And you did not say a word, not one _word…_"

Her voice broke as she collapsed against him. Easing his arms around her, Danny cleared his throat and rubbed his hands down her back, murmuring quiet words of reassurance while silently vowing to kill Flack.

"It was nothing, Linds. I promise you…" he shuddered as the sound of the high powered ammo ripping through the steel cupboard he had hidden behind echoed in his memory.

She sat down heavily on the locker-room bench, her hands covering her face.

Danny slid down the wall to the floor in front of her. "Linds," he tried again. "First thing, I'm a cop…"

She lifted a pale face, eyes ravaged. "I know what you are, Danny. I know who you are. I've always known."

_I know you, Danny. I'm not expecting anything…_

He could feel his heartbeat thicken and slow at the flat tone, the trembling lips.

"You're a cop, Danny. I know that. You are going to get into situations. You are going to run towards things that other people are running away from. I get that. I do."

Her voice had warmed a little, but it snapped cold when she looked at him. "But the last time you lied to me, you ended us. You nearly destroyed it all. It took everything I had, everything in me, to trust you again."

She pushed herself up from the bench, one hand pressed to the small of her back, scorning his offer of help, and looked down at him, her face remote.

"You'll not step back just because you have a family. If I hadn't accepted that I would never have been with you. But if you ever lie to me again, try to 'protect' me again," her face twisted bitterly on the word, "I will walk away and you will never find me."

He reached out a hand, but she turned her back on him. "Lindsay. Please. You had your say…"

"You think there is anything you can say to me that will make this okay?" she snapped over her shoulder. The tears she had denied since reading the text from Flack started falling and she wrapped her arms around the visible reminder of the relationship already under a strain she thought might break it.

Danny shook his head wearily. "I couldn't tell you."

She stopped, but didn't turn around.

He stared at his hands, turning the ring she had put on his finger only days before around and around, still conscious of its weight on his hand.

"Lindsay, I told you I was tired of being afraid. And that was true. But I didn't know – how could I know? – that being with you, being married, meant that I would be scared all the time."

"What are you trying to say, Danny?" She turned, and braced one hand against the locker, the other still clasped tightly across her body.

"I'm afraid that I'll screw up. I'm afraid you'll get hurt. I'm afraid something will go wrong with the baby. I'm afraid I won't get lucky next time." His quiet voice faded to nothing, and he dropped his head into his hands, breathing deeply for a moment before adding, "I'm afraid I can't be a good cop if I'm afraid all the time…"

She couldn't make it to the floor, so she sat back on the bench in front of him, and wrapped her left hand around his chin, coaxing his head up until she could look into his eyes.

"I'm afraid too, Danny. I think it comes with the territory. But even if something bad happens, I need to know. I just… need to know." She ended a little helplessly, her eyes squeezing shut as her breath simply stopped.

"Lindsay?!" He grabbed at her hands, and shot to his feet. "What's the matter? Are you all right?"

She didn't answer him for long enough that he pulled out his phone and flipped it open to call for help. She grabbed his arm and smiled up at him, eyes alight with a wild joy. "You'd better get over being afraid. I think we're about to have our lives changed for good."

"Now? Here? Are you sure?" He stumbled over the words, wanting to pick her up and carry her to someone who would take care of her, take care of everything.

Then he knew that for the rest of their lives, he was going to be that person.

And as that realization took hold, he grinned at his wife and said, "So, Mrs Messer? Want to go have a baby?"


	3. Chapter 3

_DISCLAIMER: All people, places, and things that rightly belong to CBS, CSI New York, and Bruckheimer remain in their custody._

_SPOILERS: Set after Episode 5:19–Communication Breakdown._

_A/N: Thanks to all reading, and especially reviewing, these little scenes. _

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**Knee-Jerk Reaction**

She had always felt it was a girl. From the moment she knew she was pregnant.

About six hours after having sex with Danny on a cold, rainy night when fear, love, and anger met desire, remorse, and sorrow in a conflagration that burned away some of the doubt and heated up the passion that had always simmered between them.

She had curled in the bed beside him, listening to him breathe. His hand had clasped hers even in sleep. When she closed her eyes and fell into an uneasy slumber, her dreams had been full of crying. The sound of babies crying.

She had snuck out of the apartment a few hours later.

For two weeks, she had waited for her usually reliable signs of pre-menstrual tension, but instead had simply felt every other kind of tension: hearing the hurt in Danny's voice when he had called the next morning; fielding his invitations to dinner, lunch, breakfast (why did he insist on trying to feed her at every opportunity?); trying to keep everyone at work from knowing that, in spite of all her brave words, she was back in a relationship with a co-worker; ignoring the increasingly anxious messages from her mother when she didn't call home for nearly three weeks.

She took her first home pregnancy test ten days after that night. After dreaming for three days straight about baby girls filling a room, piling out of an enormous distended pot on a fire. Dream-Lindsay rushed around trying to save the babies, dressed in pink with bows in their fair tufts of hair, from the fire. Then, when they had covered the floor and still kept coming, Dream-Lindsay tried to shove them all back into the pot.

She had been exhausted all the next day. So much so that Danny had commented, and then taken her out for coffee to "help her snap out of it." She had made it to the bathroom in time to throw up into the sink, had pulled her cellphone out her pocket, and had called the clinic.

Her first thought when the doctor gave her the positive result was, "I can't have a baby."

Her second thought was, "It's a girl."

Her third thought was, "I have to phone my mom."

The reality didn't hit her until she saw Danny on shift a few days later. She honestly hadn't even thought about him. She knew how that sounded, but it had not even occurred to her to tell him until she saw him, until he handed her a file and flashed that smile at her, and asked how her two days off had been, and then asked her if she wanted to go to a movie with him, "Double bill. _Speed Racer _and _Transformers._"

Then it had hit her.

Her first thought was, "Danny is going to be a father."

Her second thought was, "I can't tell him at work."

Her third thought was, "Maybe he won't want to know anyway."

And she had gone to the theatre with him, and had laughed at Danny's caustic comments about the acting, and had eaten popcorn with Sour Peaches, and had fallen asleep during the credits for the second movie, only waking up when Danny nudged her, a worried look on his face.

And she hadn't told him.

She had gone to her doctor's appointments, and taken her vitamins, and listened in awe and wonder to the baby's heartbeat overlaying her own, a rapid counterpoint to her steady rhythm.

And she hadn't told him.

She bought a little 'coming home' outfit in pink and white, and tiny booties the size of her finger, and a bonnet with frills. She hadn't intended to – it had simply been in her hand and then in a bag before she had really thought things through.

At nine weeks, she had the first ultra-sound. And she saw her baby's heart beating, and everything was suddenly real.

And she knew she had to tell Danny. She had to tell him he was going to be a father.

She didn't really think he would want to know. She told herself over and over again not to expect too much. They had been together, back together, only a few months, and although things were fine, everything had stayed pretty light. She hadn't pushed for any big discussion about 'where their relationship was going' or 'levels of commitment.' And he had seemed satisfied to keep things the way they were.

When she did tell him, in the locker room at work, she saw the pain in his eyes when she told him she wasn't asking anything of him, wasn't expecting anything of him. But what did he think? That she was going to trap him into a lifetime when so far he had shown no interest in more than a day at a time?

She had gone home after shift, the picture of the Harrises' holding their grandchild burnt into her head, the image of Nicole Harris, young, scared, but so committed, too, aching in her heart. And when she got to her apartment, Danny was there, sitting on his bike, arms crossed over his chest, face set stern and determined.

She hadn't told him it was a girl. She kept dropping hints, but he seemed determined to be the father of a Messer boy. She would call the baby 'she' and 'her' and he would ask again if she knew something he didn't.

She knew everything he didn't.

She knew her daughter liked Indian food, but couldn't stand sushi. Loved bread, but hated lettuce. Craved chocolate, but wouldn't settle for hours if she so much as smelled coffee. She knew her daughter liked to play at 3 in the morning, and sleep through from noon to 4 every day. She knew her daughter had turned and was head down, in birthing position, because she would hook her feet under Lindsay's ribs and swing, causing Lindsay to have to jump up out of her chair and stretch in order to keep breathing.

She knew her daughter would have blue, blue eyes and a wicked grin.

But she still wasn't sure she would have a father.

He'd asked her. Danny had screwed up his courage and popped the question. Several questions, actually, stammered out more in Adam's style than Messer's usual smooth delivery. It had broken her heart to say no, to watch the anxious hope turn to puzzled affront.

But it had been the right thing to do, she had convinced herself. She had promised herself, promised her daughter, that she wouldn't push him, wouldn't trap him, wouldn't ask more of him than he could give.

It took her weeks to realize that he had offered her everything, and she had dropped it on the ground between them as if it were nothing.

The second time, he didn't ask. He had it all set up, and it could have felt rushed and offhand. Instead, it felt impetuous and loving and a little bit desperate.

A perfect Messer wedding.

She went to Montana. Her mother had cried, and her father had hugged her hard. Her brothers had teased and her friends had squeed and loaned her baby clothes.

And Danny had started sending lists of names.

All boys' names.

"I don't know," she sighed, talking to her friend Joanne, who had been in her organic chemistry class at U of M. "It's like he can only see one possibility, and that's a boy. A Messer boy to carry on the family name."

"You taking his name?" Joanne asked casually.

Lindsay stifled a giggle, "Sort of."

Joanne raised an eyebrow, something she was expert at. "_Sort of_ Lindsay Messer? Is that like _sort of_ Mama Messer?" She touched Lindsay's belly softly.

"I signed the register Lindsay Messer," Lindsay confessed. "I couldn't help it! It just seemed like the right thing to do."

Joanne didn't even try to stifle her laughter.

"But I'll still be Detective Monroe. Not just because it would be confusing, but because I worked hard to be Detective Monroe."

"And that won't be confusing at all – Detective Monroe, but Mrs. Messer? Your kid's going to be messed up."

Lindsay shrugged, "Oh well. Comes with the territory. Confusion over her last name couldn't be as bad as over her first name: can you imagine a little girl called Amos?"

"Or – what was it - Alphonse?" Joanne held out a hand imperiously, "Do you have your last sonogram?"

Lindsay pulled the picture out if her wallet and handed it to Joanne. "Why?" As soon as Joanne gave it a good look, Lindsay tried to snatch it back. "No. Joanne! We promised we would wait – we want it to be a surprise!"

"As much a surprise as a boy called Clemenza?" her friend quipped back.

Lindsay bit her lip and sat back in her chair, sulking.

Joanne looked carefully at the picture, her eyes softening and filling up with tears. "Oh, Lindsay."

"What? What's wrong?" Lindsay sat back up and grabbed for the sonogram, staring down at it protectively.

"You better tell Danny to make that catcher's mitt a small. She's going to need it." The smile spread from Joanne's face to Lindsay's eyes, and the two clasped hands, then hugged tightly.

"I need… just give me a minute, could you, Jo?" Lindsay's phone was already in her hand, her thumb hesitating between "call" and "sms".

"Call him, Linds," Joanne urged.

Lindsay shook her head slowly, "I can't. If he's in the field…"

The image of Peyton Driscoll calling Mac in the middle of a tense situation, nearly getting him killed in the process, flashed through her memory, and her thumb fell solidly on the "sms" button.

_Hey Daddy. Your little girl says to tell you she's doing just fine in here & can't wait to come out & meet you._

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Three time zones and a couple thousand miles away, Danny sighed, and then grinned sheepishly as he put away his phone.

"That was Lindsay."

"She alright?"

"Yeah," he answered. "She's fine. And so is the baby girl in her belly."

Amongst the sincere congratulations, kisses, and handclasps from his team, Danny heard Hawkes snicker, "A player's curse."

"_No man ever going to get close enough to my daughter…"_

He wondered how many times his past was going to come back to haunt him in his little girl's eyes.


End file.
